by Greg Cox
“Not again,” Wolverine snarled, his eyes wild. Flecks of foam appeared at the corners of his mouth.
“Logan?”
Rogue’s magnolia-tinged voice called him back to sanity. For the first time, he became aware that he was not alone in this mirrored mausoleum. Who else got snatched? he wondered, fearing that the rest of the X-Men had been captured as well.
Straining to lift his head despite the metal band stretched across his throat, Logan managed to crane his head enough to see two more sarcophagi reflected in the horizontal mirror, each one holding another tube-and-wire-bedecked hostage clad in matching orange plastic jumpsuits that, he assumed, looked better on Rogue and the other woman than they did on him. Rogue’s elevated coffin was directly to the right of Logan, with the third prisoner farther down the row. From what he could see, she had it worse than either he or Rogue. An opaque metal visor completely covered her eyes. He guessed she couldn’t see a thing, if she was even conscious at all.
Least there’s only the three of us, it looks like. That’s somethin’, I guess.
It took him a second or two to recognize the blindfolded woman, as much by her scent as by her curly auburn hair: Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch.
Magneto’s daughter, he thought uncharitably, then granted that it wasn’t exactly fair to hold her old man’s crimes against her. He didn’t know the Witch very well, but figured she couldn’t be too much like her father, otherwise a bunch of Boy Scouts like the Avengers would’ve never let her into their club. Probably ought to give her the benefit of the doubt. Least for now.
“I hear ya, Rogue,” he replied. Needles in his throat made it painful to speak. He tested the bonds holding his arms and legs, with little success. No big surprise there, he decided; if these shiny steel manacles were strong enough to hold Rogue, there was no way he was breaking out of them anytime soon. He’d just have to wait for the right opportunity to escape. It would come; it always did. “What about you, Witchie?” he called out to their neighbor. “You with us?”
“So it appears,” she answered. Her accent sounded a bit like Magneto’s. Czech maybe, or Ukrainian. “And my name is Wanda.”
“This here’s Wolverine,” Rogue volunteered, thinking perhaps that Wanda wouldn’t recognize their voices. “And ah’m Rogue. From the X-Men, you know?”
“I know who you are,” the Witch said icily, with special emphasis on the pronoun. “Carol Danvers is a friend of mine.”
Caught offguard by the rebuke, Rogue couldn’t conceal her stricken expression.
Ouch, Logan thought. That’s gotta hurt.
Rogue was carrying around a lot of guilt where Carol Danvers was concerned. Back when Carol was still calling herself Ms. Marvel, a younger Rogue, led astray by Mystique, had permanently stolen the female Avenger’s strength and super-powers, along with most of Carol’s memories. Carol had been a long time recovering from that devastating attack on her very identity, and, from what Logan had heard, she still suffered psychological scars from the whole crummy business.
No more so than Rogue, he knew, although he supposed he couldn’t expect Carol’s old Avengers buddy to understand that.
“I’ve known Danvers longer than either of you,” Logan stated bluntly. It was true, too; he and Carol had teamed up on plenty of risky spy missions back when they were both doing the secret agent thing, way before either he or Carol got sucked into the super hero biz. “And none of that old news is goin’ to do us a bit of good here. So let’s put any bad blood behind us, at least ’til we bring down the house on whatever dirtbag shanghaied us.”
The Scarlet Witch couldn’t exactly nod her head, not with her neck pinned down, but she looked like she got the message. “Point made, X-Man,” she said coolly.
Logan caught a look of relief on Rogue’s face. Remind me to teach that girl how to play poker, he thought; sometimes her emotions were way too obvious.
“Where do you think we are?” Wanda asked.
Good question, he thought. While Rogue described their prison to the blindfolded Witch, Logan sniffed the air for clues; it smelled sterile. Antiseptic. The temperature felt like an even seventy degrees or so. His ears detected the distant thrumming of automated machinery in the walls and floors, beneath the hum of the sensors built into their high-tech coffins, but nothing that provided any hint of their present location. The only odd thing was, and he couldn’t be sure of this, strapped down like he was, but his body felt lighter somehow. Like there was something not quite right with the gravity. Or maybe that was just a side-effect of whatever their captors used to knock him out before. He eyed the I.V. lines flowing into his arm with disgust. Who knew what kind of junk they might be feeding him?
“Hard to say where this is,” he told Rogue and the Witch, making eye contact with Rogue via the mirror. “Some kind of lab, obviously.”
Back in the lab again … Another post-traumatic flashback to his past ordeal crept up on Logan’s consciousness, bringing with it an almost overwhelming fury that made it hard to concentrate on anything else. His heart pounded with remembered torment. Tubes and needles gouging into me. Liquid metal pouring into my marrow, changing me from within. Pain and bones and spikes …
Logan bit down on his lower lip—hard—to hold back an atavistic howl. He dug his fingernails into his palms, using the pain to keep himself grounded in the present, to approach their dilemma from a strictly strategic point of view.
Think like Cyke, he thought, glad that Jeannie wasn’t around to pick up that particular bit of brain activity. Take this cool as a cucumber. All business. He could go crazy later, when there was an enemy within slashing range. When he could slice their captors into so many bite-sized pieces of meat. I’m looking forward to that.
“Hey, Witch… er, Wanda,” he said. “The way they’ve got us trussed up, me an’ Rogue can’t pull any of our usual stunts, but how ’bout you?” It dawned on him that he had only the fuzziest idea of how the Scarlet Witch’s powers worked. Some kind of mutant magic or something? She’d been a regular adversary of the X-Men once, back when she was still working for her dad, but that was way before Logan hooked up with the team. “Any chance you can witch yourself loose?”
Wanda tried to shake her head, was forcibly reminded of her restraints, and abandoned the gesture. “Not really,” she explained. “I use my hands to focus my powers and my eyes to pinpoint the target of my hex.” Examining her more closely in the mirror, Logan noticed that, unlike he and Rogue, the Witch’s hands were completely encased by solid metal hemispheres the size of boxing gloves.
Bet she can’t even a wiggle a finger, he guessed.
“It’s like trying to read in the dark,” Wanda said, attempting to fully describe the difficulties imposed on her by her specially-designed bonds. “Or turn a page with your hands tied behind your back. Maybe in time I might be able to manage something, but it doesn’t feel natural except the way that I usually project a hex sphere, if that makes any sense at all.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Wolverine said gruffly. Not for the first time, he was thankful his mutant senses and healing ability were simple and uncomplicated, as opposed to some sort of weird sci-fi type power. Let other mutants shoot energy beams from their bodies, read minds, or tinker with gravity.
Me, I like the basics—even if they can’t do me much good under the circumstances. Too bad Witchie didn’t inherit her dad’s magnetic powers. Then she could dismantle this whole setup in no time at all.
Putting aside thoughts of escape, at least for the moment, Logan reviewed the unlikely chain of events that had brought him here, events that seemed crazier the more he thought about them. Shape-changing deer—what was that all about? The injuries inflicted by the unnatural antlers had long since healed, thanks to his mutant metabolism, but the bizarre nature of the attack lingered in his memory.
“So,” he said aloud to the other prisoners, “I don’t suppose you two got bushwhacked by Bambi and his folks?”
Rogue lo
oked like she had no idea what he was talking about. “What’s a Disney movie got to do with all this?”
By the time they got through comparing notes, Logan felt even more in the dark than before.
“All I know,” he declared, “is that a setup like this, with all this E.R. hardware and crud, wasn’t built by no flamin’ puppets, deer, or tee-shirts! This place stinks of the kind of preening egghead who figgers the whole blamed world would be better off under his thumb. You know the type. Rogue. We’ve trashed enough of them.” He glanced at Wanda in the mirror, making a point to include her. “So have the Avengers, I bet.”
“But who are they, Wolvie?” Rogue asked.
Logan had no idea. As an Avenger or an X-Man, the three of them had probably made enough enemies to fill a couple dozen penitentiaries. It was likely someone with an interest in mutants, he guessed; that was the main thing all three prisoners had in common. Besides choosing a lousy day for a little R&R, that is.
“What do you think they want with us?” Rogue wondered aloud.
“Nothing good,” Logan stated with certainty. Unbidden, images from that other lab flashed through his mind, pulling back his lips until his fangs were fully bared.
Pain and bones and spikes…
* * *
“THEY are awake and aware. Are you certain your shackles can hold them?”
“Fear not, my security-conscious friend. Trust me, those adamantium restraints would hold back the Hulk … well, almost. Besides, even if they should escape, which is highly improbable, where could they go? Have you forgotten precisely where we are?”
“If only I could! And I still think it would have been wiser to have kept them separated. Why give them the opportunity to conspire against us?”
“The controlled interaction of their respective mutant traits is a fundamental aspect of my experiment. This arrangement simplifies procedures considerably, and it eliminates the inherent risks involved in physically transporting them from one location to another, such as from a solitary cell to a lab and back again. Indeed, statistics indicate that approximately 75.331 percent of successful escapes occur during the transportation of prisoners. You may be assured that all such logistical matters were subjected to thorough analysis and consideration during the very conception of this project.”
“I am not interested in procedures, only results. How long before you can deliver what you have promised? I have no desire to languish in this accursed place forever, not while entire worlds remain to be conquered.”
“Spoken like a soldier, not a scientist. Patience. The experiment is just beginning…”
* * *
THE torture began without warning. Mechanical waldoes descended from the ceiling, bearing scalpels, lasers, and fiber-optic cameras at the ends of jointed metal arms.
Uh-oh. Looks like the fun’s starting, Logan thought, bracing himself for what was to come.
The whirr of the servoes came ever closer. Metal rods protruded from the sarcophagus, forcing his hands open and his fingers apart. His hairy palms thus exposed, the waldoes moved in closer to commence their inhuman tasks. A remote-controlled scalpel made surgical incisions across his right palm, then retreated a few centimeters while Logan’s stubborn flesh swiftly reknitted itself under the watchful eye of a miniature camera embedded in the base of the scalpel. Logan had no doubt that, besides the knife’s-eye view provided by the scalpel, the various sensors affixed to his body were monitoring his heartbeat, respiration, glands, et cetera, to see how they registered during the healing process.
“Take a good look, bub,” he called out to his unseen tormentor. Only the slightest trickle of blood escaped before the shallow cuts disappeared entirely. “You’re the one who’s goin’ to need healin’ after I get done with you!”
The only response to his threat came from an automated laser that directed a narrow beam of coherent light against his exposed left palm, methodically burning away the uppermost layer of skin, exposing raw, reddened tissue. Logan grimaced slightly but made no sound, even as his hyper-sensitive nostrils smelled his own vaporized flesh. He’d bite his tongue off before he’d give the sadist behind the mirror the satisfaction of hearing one peep from him. The searing heat of the laser hurt more than the scalpel, but the damage it inflicted was nothing his mutant healing factor couldn’t handle.
That, he feared, was the whole point.
The scalpel sliced his right hand open again. This time, the blade struck deeper, all the way to the bone.
* * *
“A truly remarkable rate of metabolic regeneration, marked by an accelerated immune response and profuse cellular mitosis that appears to impose minimal strain on his circadian rhythms and autonomic functions. Wolverine’s recuperative abilities are just as formidable as I had been led to believe; I know of only one individual whose healing powers surpass those of this specimen. I will be curious to observe how Wolverine’s immune system copes with the various toxins and varieties of electromagnetic radiation I intend to subject him to. It should be a fascinating experiment.”
“Fascinating to you, perhaps. Do not let your idle curiosity interfere with the timely pursuit of our objective. What about the females? When will you begin with them?”
“Time spent accumulating new scientific knowledge is never wasted. Still, if it will ease your militaristic impatience, let us proceed to the next stage of my research. Kindly observe the specimen known as Rogue.”
Poor Wolvie!
Rogue could barely bring herself to watch as the robotic arms slashed and burned Logan’s defenseless flesh. Sure, his special healing power would protect him from any permanent damage, but that didn’t mean the busy knives and lasers didn’t hurt like blazes. Her own hands, which already felt naked without their usual gloves, seemed even more exposed. She clenched her fists protectively and winced in sympathy with each new wound inflicted on Logan. What kind of no-good sidewinder could do this to another person? From what she could see in the mirror, they weren’t even using any sort of anesthetic!
She was tempted to offer Wolverine whatever paltry words of comfort she could come up with, but she knew that the stoic X-Man did not want anybody’s pity or sympathy, especially when a hostile party was almost certainly looking on. Her compassion might be seen as a sign of weakness or vulnerability on his part. So she kept her mouth shut, all the while wishing there was something—anything—she could do to relieve Logan’s torment.
And wondering when her own turn was coming round.
“What’s happening?” the Scarlet Witch asked, one coffin over. Her nose twitched beneath the metal visor. “What’s that burning smell?”
Trust me, sugah, you don’t want to know. Rather than keep the other woman in the dark, however, Rogue opened her mouth to respond. She hadn’t forgotten the Witch’s harsh remark about Carol Danvers, but no matter what the other woman thought about her, Rogue couldn’t just let Wanda suffer in sightless suspense. ’Sides, I guess she’s entitled to feel the way she does, being a friend of Ms. Marvel and all.
“They’re performin’ some kind of medical experiments on Wolverine,” she began, wondering how much grisly detail the Scarlet Witch would want. “Ah don’ know why.”
Before she could explain further, the raised metal ridge running along the left side of her coffin slid downward and out of sight, at the same time that the ridge on the right side of Logan’s pulled a similar disappearing act.
What now? Rogue wondered apprehensively.
A mechanical rumbling started up beneath her, like a conveyor belt coming to life, and the two metal caskets containing her and Wolverine began to slide horizontally toward each other, with not a single plate of chromed steel to separate their transfixed bodies. Rogue stared in alarm as her uncovered left hand drew steadily nearer to Logan’s scarred and bleeding right palm. It wasn’t the blood that frightened her, though, but the prospect of their two hands touching.
“Wait! Stop!” she cried out to whomever was operating the mechanism bring
ing them together. “Y’all don’ know what you’re doin’!”
Unfortunately, she had a sneaking suspicion that they did.
Their bare hands less than a foot apart and closing fast, Rogue’s frantic eyes found Wolverine’s. From the grim look on his face, it was clear he had also realized what their captors were up to.
No! she thought fervently. I won’t let it happen. I won’t! She struggled anew against the metal bonds holding her arm in place, but it was no good; not even Ms. Marvel’s stolen super-strength could break the unyielding steel bands.
“Ah’m so sorry, Logan,” she whispered. “Ah don’ want this.”
“I know that, kid,” he assured her. She searched for forgiveness in his face, finding it in his ageless black eyes. “It ain’t your fault.”
Somewhere to the right, now a bit further away, the Scarlet Witch demanded to know what was going on. But there was no time to explain, even if Rogue felt like sharing her profound humiliation and horror with the blindfolded Avenger, which was not exactly her first instinct.
Bad enough that I have to know what I’m going to do to Logan.
The edge of Rogue’s coffin clanked against Wolverine’s as the conveyances came to a halt. Her trapped hand pressed against his, flesh to flesh, and, despite herself, the young mutant gasped in anticipation. Strange new sensations, wild and unbelievably intense, flooded her mind and senses as, against her will, Logan’s powers and memories flowed into her, leaving him drained and unconscious. Familiar faces and exotic places rushed the stage of her memory: Sabretooth and Mariko, the Yukon and Madripoor, Heather Hudson, Jubilee, and Krakoa…
Her teeth sharpened into carnivorous fangs. Her brown hair grew stiffer and more fur-like in a matter of instants. Her eyes blazed with predatory fury as her senses came alive, smell and touch and hearing suddenly magnified a hundredfold. The whole world became brighter and richer and more vivid. Feral passions surged inside her, even as Wolverine slumped within his coffin, his drooping lips finally releasing the anguished moan that neither slicing blades nor scorching laser fire had succeeded in extracting before.
